


Something Like Love

by lafiametta



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: 2x01, And So Do I After This Episode Apparently, F/M, Wyatt Has A Lot of Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 00:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13986993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafiametta/pseuds/lafiametta
Summary: It's been six weeks since he last saw her, six weeks since it all went to shit. And now she's back, and Wyatt has no idea what to say to her.





	Something Like Love

He can’t believe he’s really looking at her. 

But there she is, dressed in a borrowed pair of Jiya’s sweats, her dark hair still slightly damp from the shower she insisted on taking the minute they finished with the debrief. Wyatt had understood that part, at least. War had a god-awful way of making you want to wipe every trace of it from off your skin as soon as you got the chance, and he was sure that Saint-Mihiel wasn’t all that different from Kandahar in that regard. 

He’s imagined her here so many times, he’s heard the ghost of her laugh echo from the mess, watched her shadow stride purposefully along the narrow corridors.  

Sometimes it had hurt too much to think about her – especially when it seemed like he was the only one who really  _was_  – and then all he could do was try to lose himself in distraction, trying to make himself not think at all. But there were only so many things he could do in that confined, underground space, only so many sets of chin-ups and bench presses he could hammer out, only so many times he could cajole Rufus or Jiya – whichever one didn’t have their hands busy with the Lifeboat – into taking him on in a few rounds of Mortal Kombat. He had even tried making headway into the bunker’s tiny library, until that one afternoon when he had found it there, missing a dust jacket, sandwiched between a biography of Patton and a dog-eared investment guide from 1994.  _The World’s A Stage: The Booth Brothers and the Plot to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln_ , it read along the spine. By Lucy Preston. 

He had pulled the book from off the shelf and held it like a relic in his hands, feeling his lungs kick back in as they remembered the necessity of breathing. Somehow, just at that moment, he had known, felt it in some deep, hidden part of himself. She was still alive. She had to be. And even though he didn’t know where she was – hell, he didn’t know  _when_  she was – Wyatt knew that he would see her again, that he would do everything he possibly could to find her. 

She looks so tiny, standing in the center of the bunk room, her body swallowed up by the shapelessness of the sweats, and he wants to say something,  _anything_ , that would make her feel just the tiniest bit better. Even though he can’t see her face, he can still sense how adrift she feels, what the six weeks they’ve spent apart have taken from her. 

“It’s not exactly what you were expecting to come home to, huh?”

He wants it to be funny, a stupid little joke meant to make light of this altogether shitty situation, or perhaps just a commentary on what a mess Jiya’s side of the room is, but it comes out rougher than he planned, and not really that funny at all. 

Not that jokes would have helped all that much. The way she answers him, her voice clipped and unforgiving, makes his chest ache, and he just feels so damned useless. He may have gotten her back, but he can’t undo what’s been done, everything she’s gone through. 

She turns and looks at him, her eyes pink-rimmed with heartbreak, and all he wants to do is go to her and wrap her up in his arms. But he’s the worst kind of coward, so he settles for shuffling a little closer, his hands awkward in his pockets, watching as she sits on the neatly-made bed across from Jiya’s. Wyatt won’t ever tell her that he’s the one who made that bed for her, right after she left for the showers, tucking the sheets and the blanket under the mattress with military sharpness, just the way he had first learned it in boot camp. 

She tells him then, tells him everything, about the man she killed, about her plans to destroy the Mothership and possibly herself along with it. It’s almost too much for him to hear, even now, with her alive and back with them again. Because she was out there all alone, really alone, with no hope that he or Rufus or any of the rest of the team was still alive, and it only hits him now what that must have felt like. For six weeks, he’d been a wreck, but he’d still been part of  _a unit_ , knowing in the end that they were all working together towards the larger mission. Perhaps more importantly, he had known she was out there, driven by the faith that he would finally find her. But Lucy didn’t have anybody at all.

She holds it together for a little while, trying to be strong, as if by this point she had anything to prove to anyone. But it’s the realization about her mother that finally makes her break, barely-contained tears edging along the corners of her eyes. 

“I’ve lost everything,” she whispers, her face crumbling, and there’s nothing left to hold him back, nothing left to do but close the distance between them and let her know she still has  _something_ , for all that it might be worth to her now. And, god, she’s so warm, so small in his arms as he clasps them around her.  

He pulls her closer, each of her sobs tearing like a knife into his heart, and it hurts so much because he remembers exactly what this was like, feeling like he had nothing left to live for. As if every light in the world had gone out all at once, leaving him empty and alone in the darkness. Because he wants her to understand – he  _needs_  her to understand – that she won’t ever have to be alone, not anymore. 

For a moment, Wyatt remembers what Rufus had said to him back in 1918, when they were driving in the car, and how quickly he had denied it. Because it hadn’t seemed possible, not after everything he had gone through with Jess. But now, as he holds her, he’s not so sure, because everything seems to have shifted so suddenly, when he wasn’t even looking, and if this isn’t love, then it sure feels a hell of a lot like it. 

And then her hand reaches up towards the side of his face, clutching at him in need, and he’s powerless to stop it, even as he knows what’s about to happen. But he’s always been powerless when it came to Lucy, he realizes: it’s just taken him this long – and losing her for the third time – to finally admit it. 

He turns his head down towards her, slowly catching her gaze with his own. Her eyes are full, still bright with tears, but all he can see is her. 


End file.
